- The U.S. military is shipping 20,000 soldiers and their equipment across the Atlantic for Defender-Europe 20, which will see the largest deployment of U.S. forces in Europe since the 1990s.
- Bringing these forces to Europe and then traveling them to Europe will be the biggest test to date for the logistical muscles that the United States and NATO allowed to weaken after the Cold War.
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The American cargo ship US Seal Seal Command USNS Benavidez and the merchant ships flying the American flag MV Resolve and MV Patriot took off across the Atlantic to Europe last month, escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf through a path drawn by the strike group of the Eisenhower transporters.
Crossing the Atlantic is not new to the Navy, but this exercise – a convoy operation simulating an opposite transit – is the first of its kind since 1986.
“We may not have done this for 35 years, but we had to … conduct convoy operations around the planet,” said Captain Andrew Fitzpatrick, commander of Vella Gulf last week. “So we put some of these concepts and lessons learned in the way we execute this particular operation.”
The convoy precedes this spring’s Defender-Europe 20, a massive multinational exercise to which the United States is dispatching 20,000 soldiers and much of their equipment – the largest deployment of U.S. forces to Europe in 25 years.
Defender-Europe 20 will feature “an almost fictitious counterpart competitor” in a future “post-article V environment,” said an army planning official last year, referring to the NATO layout. in matters of collective defense.
Like the Navy convoy, the army-led Defender-Europe 20 involves practicing old skills to meet new challenges.
The right bandwidth
Preparations for Defender-Europe 20 began in January, when US personnel loaded vehicles and equipment for rail transportation to American ports.
The first combat power arrived on February 20, when tanks and other vehicles of the United States army entered the port of Bremerhaven in Germany. The participating countries will present equipment at 14 airports and seaports in eight European countries during the year.
Another 13,000 pieces of equipment will be drawn from pre-positioned army stocks in northwest Europe and deployed to 18 countries for training – land convoys will cover some 2,500 miles to organize the exercise.
Defender-Europe 20 will end with the cleaning of training areas by the United States and its partner forces, the return of equipment to these stocks, and, for American troops, the redeployment to the United States.
Like crossing the Atlantic, traveling to Europe is not new, but doing so now will test skills that weren’t used much in the years after the Cold War, when the American presence in Europe has shrunk and NATO’s ability to deploy quickly has shrunk.
“I am concerned about the bandwidth to be able to accept this important force,” Air Force General Tod Wolters, head of the European Union Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 25. ‘he was asked what challenges he expects from exercise. present.
“I am also concerned with road and rail from central Germany … to the eastern border,” said Wolters.
“Because we have the appropriate resources, we now have a white team capacity to examine our speed of movement from west to east, and we also have enough white blood cells to assess how well we are getting stuff. all safety by Bremerhaven and at the next point. “, added Wolters. “Bandwidth in terms of size and speed are my biggest concerns.”
The exercise “will allow us to see ourselves at three levels – tactical, operational, strategic,” General Gus Perna, chief of the US Army Material Command, who oversees installations, maintenance and parts, told reporters in February.
“This will strengthen where we think we are tactically in terms of material readiness,” added Perna. “Can we mobilize outside the barracks and car pools, move to ports and airfields, and then plan strategically in a place across the ocean?”
Count every second
Since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine in 2014, the U.S. military has strengthened its presence in Europe and increased its logistics capacity there, landing in new places and using new methods of getting around.
“On the logistics side of the house, the environment in Europe has to be mature enough to be able to absorb 20,000 soldiers and bring those soldiers to the right pre-positioned locations to be able to grab the appropriate equipment they are supposed to be getting. be able to run, “said Wolters.
“What we want to do is count every second it takes for the soldier from the first point of entry to his shooting hole to succeed … and we anticipate that there will be snags”, said Wolters. .
Wolters attributed to the European Defense Initiative, launched after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the opportunity to make Defender-Europe 20 possible.
EDI has “financed the combat teams of the rotation brigades which go to Poland, and which teaches all our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines how to raise and move larger quantities of forces across the Atlantic and do it without no damage, “said Wolters. the committee.
EDI also funded “our Air Force Emergency Operations Packages and our deployable Air Force base systems,” said Wolters. “We have also been able to significantly improve our aerodrome infrastructure and the reception infrastructure in the eastern part of Europe where it is equipped today to receive these resources safely and efficiently obtain these resources there. where they should go. “
But EDI funding was particularly important for prepositioned army stocks.
Two years ago, “we weren’t ripe enough for prepositioned stocks for a soldier to show up at location X and grab resources. Today, we can do it,” a said Wolters. “We know the capability of the resources, and now we will be able to examine the speed at which they can get to the skirmish hole and be able to execute.”
These stocks keep heavy equipment like tanks and essential supplies like ammunition at forward locations so that troops can deploy, equip and move to the front line.
Perna, chief of the Army Material Command, said last month that his command was working on another prepositioned stock that would be located where Wolters and the head of the U.S. military in Europe, Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli, believed it was necessary.
“I can imagine where Defender 2020 could shed light on several things” about these actions, said Perna. “Is it in the right place? Do we need to adapt? Do we want to create alternative sites so that everyone can guess what we are doing? Is there a better place to highlight things? “
“I also think that the release of Defender 20 could be a thinking process,” Hey, we need more … or we need different from what we have, “added Perna.
“Pull, move and communicate quickly”
Wolters testified that he was concerned about roads and railways in eastern Germany, but transport infrastructure across eastern Europe is a continuing concern.
In addition to a tangle of customs and transport regulations, the size of railways often varies across Europe, which means delays when cargo crosses borders. The roads there are often narrow and, in some cases, cannot accommodate heavy vehicles – a particular problem for the many aging bridges in Eastern Europe.
All of this would be complicated in wartime, as Russia, which controlled much of Eastern Europe, had its weak spots. (Russia is “not too happy” with Defender-Europe 20, said Wolters.)
NATO and the European Union have also devoted resources to improving local infrastructure. NATO has also established two new commands to supervise movements like those underway for Defender-Europe 20. The Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, oversees operations in the Atlantic, while Joint Command of Support and Activation in Ulm, Germany, oversees the movement of armored and Allied troops in Europe.
The limitations of civilian infrastructure, particularly in the Baltic states and Poland, are “a problem of which all of Europe was very, very aware in the mid-1980s, and are getting back in touch with it today”, a said Wolters.
“They understand the imperative to ensure that we have transition programs in the northeast and southeast regions of Europe to ensure that we can shoot, move and communicate quickly.”